Extraction of photocapture cross sections from direct Coulomb break-up reactions

Abstract

The cross section for a direct Coulomb break-up reaction may be related, within the restriction of first-order processes, to the cross section for the inverse photocapture reaction. This relationship has a possible application in determining astrophysical interesting photocapture cross sections from break-up data. By specific analysis for a particular break-up reaction, 7Li to alpha +t at 70 MeV, it is shown however that secondary effects considerably complicate the relationship, and therefore erode its value for extracting astrophysical data.